creating a raid 5 array in linux with mdadm

i recently had a hard drive fail in my server. luckily i was running it in a raid 1 array so all of my data was kept safe. i decided that while i had a hard drive out of service that i might as well take some time to do some upgrading of my storage space. i had been just running two basic raid 1 arrays (each with two 1 TB drives) using mdadm with ext3 for my virtual machines and other assorted storage. while ext3 is a very stable file system, it isn’t know for its speed. while i certainly wasn’t running out of storage space by any means, i thought it to be smarter to upgrade while i had enough space to rearrange things. ...

November 4, 2010 · 7 min · mbentley

upgrading to adobe flash player 10.2.161.22 (64 bit) on debian

as i mentioned in my previous blog article, adobe temporarily pulled 64 bit support for the 64 bit plugin. a few days ago (september 15) they released preview 1 of flash player 10.2. if you have followed the instructions in my previous article, upgrading is quite simple. if not, don’t worry, there are only a few extra steps! please remember that this is a beta version so it may not be 100% stable. the method i am using will add a new option to update-alternatives which will allow you to switch between a stable and testing plugin of flash player. this makes it quite simple to change between versions. ...

September 17, 2010 · 3 min · mbentley

installing adobe flash player 64 bit on debian

somewhat recently, adobe has pulled all support for 64 bit flash player on linux. debian has also remove the support from it’s non-free archives so the flashplugin-nonfree package no longer works properly. i find that gnash and swfdec are pretty lacking and are not compatible with all websites which is a major problem for me. after searching online, i found a 64 bit copy of libflashplayer.so and wanted to install it the debian way using update-alternatives. here are the steps to install it properly: ...

July 14, 2010 · 2 min · mbentley

iPhone iOS 4 & 5 upgrade – restore lost pictures in camera roll

update 10/21/2011 - it appears that this bug has come up again with a number of people who have updated to iOS 5. luckily, the solution is the same as before. i have updated the instructions to help with any changes that iOS 5 added. before you start - this will only work if your photos actually exist on your device but do not show up in in the camera roll. you can verify that photos exist on your device by looking graph at the bottom of iTunes and by checking your device for the actual picture files. if you post comments about having problems but don’t mention that you haven’t verified that your photos are still available on your device, i’m sorry but i won’t be able to help you. ...

June 23, 2010 · 3 min · mbentley

installing smoothwall 3.0 on a soekris engineering net4801 (part 2)

continued from part 1 yesterday i received my soekris engineering net4801-60 in the mail. the unit seems to be in good condition and even came with a compactflash card and vpn1411 card which i won’t end up using. i will most likely end up selling the vpn card as i don’t use my smoothwall to create a vpn and the smoothwall os does not have support built into the kernel for a vpn card such as this anyway. ...

February 12, 2010 · 4 min · mbentley

installing smoothwall 3.0 on a soekris engineering net4801 (part 1)

even though all of my parts have not arrived for my new smoothwall project, i can begin to do some initial setup. first of all, here are all of the items of which i needed to find for the project: soekris engineering net4801-60 soekris engineering 2.5" hdd mounting kit soekris engineering power supply 2.5" ide hard drive 10 foot serial null modem cable since i already have the hard drive, i can do some of the prep work by installing smoothwall. i am using an old laptop to install the os to the hard drive. luckily linux is much less picky than windows about changing hardware after installing. i downloaded and burnt a copy of the latest smoothwall 3.0 sp1. installing smoothwall is about as straight forward as things come. just follow the steps on the screen until you get to the “Network configuration menu”. since we currently do not have the correct network cards in the computer, this part is going to be overwritten later. ...

February 7, 2010 · 3 min · mbentley

optimizing vmware server 2.0 on a linux host

like many people, i like to tinker with all sorts of different technology including multiple operating systems as well as the different roles they can play. one of the best ways that i can do that is by using a virtualization product. i just happen to use vmware server 2.0 on my debian lenny server. vmware is one of the leaders in virtualization (if not the leader). at home, i have five virtual machines that i rely on heavily for my day-to-day operations. i have two windows server 2008 domain controllers, two windows server 2003 servers running exchange 2003 and one windows server 2008 computer i use for remote desktop and management of services. some of these services can provide a fair load on my server and i was starting to see the impact, especially from my win2k8 vms. it seems that there are a number of optimizations that are not enabled by default in vmware server. i searched far and wide through vmware kb docs as well as blogs and web forums and came up with the following optimizations: ...

February 5, 2010 · 3 min · mbentley

building a more efficient smoothwall

i’ve decided to look more into power efficiency of my computers at home. while my power bill isn’t horrible, it could most definitely be lower. there are only a few computers that i leave running 24/7. one of them is my smoothwall. while i built that computer with power efficiency in mind, i didn’t take things to the extreme that i could have. now i want to build a solution that is closer in power consumption to your typical home router appliance. after doing some research, i found a solution that would not only be power efficient but also cost effective. the solution is the soekris engineering net4801. ...

February 4, 2010 · 2 min · mbentley